Kevin's Random Thought of the Day...

[Kevin]

I live close enough to a small regional airport that sometimes I can see the lights from the occasional plane flying overhead at night time. While walking the dog one night a random thought occurred to me...

If a life form from another planet was indeed scouting Earth via a "UFO" or other device they would want to remain undetected presumably so they would want to mask their device as something that would blend in with the local environment. To that end... looking up at the night sky and seeing the familiar triangle pattern of lights from a small aircraft, I wonder now if any of them are not what they seem to be.

 

[Tom]

To presume that alien life forms would have the same values as us is distorted.
This is the main reason I classify encounters as time travelers. They would have the same references and ideals along with a similar body shape and dimensions.

 

[Kevin]

To presume that alien life forms would have the same values as us is distorted.

This is the main reason I classify encounters as time travelers. They would have the same references and ideals along with a similar body shape and dimensions.

Wanting to not be detected really wouldn't be associated with a life forms values as much as it's natural instincts. Think of any known life form on Earth... when it stalks its prey it tries not be noticed so that the prey is not alarmed. A human certainly doesn't have the same values as, say a burmese python, but both prefer to not be seen until the last possible moment.

I would tend to think that any life form would, by default, want to remain hidden when scouting.

 

[Tom]

So you think we are being hunted by ET? For Food? For technology? For Mating? For What?

A civilization capeable of FTL travel, Energy technology and command of the forces of gravity is going to travel to our neck of the woods and stalk us for some reason.

Time travellers may be stalking us for genetic material to repair their mutations or to repopulate their time with base human sequence. It just makes more sense than ET coming all this way past many other worlds and resources just to get to our tiny planet for any reason.

In a few million years our species may mutate past what we consider human. Given our intelligence so early in our development and the rate at which we advance I would say the time barrier is more likely to be broken than the light barrier. It just makes more sense.

 

[Kevin]

We, as humans, scout other animals on our own planet all the time. When a photographer takes a photo in the savannas of Africa, do you think he is going to do it out in the open visible to lions & other predators or do you think he'll try to remain hidden? Is that photographer out there to eat the lion? For the lion's technology? Mating? No, he is simply studying it.

If life did exist 'out there' and came across our planet do you think they'll just land in the middle of New York City and introduce themselves? No, they would study us first much like we study the lions.

To dismiss life out there could be a fatal mistake in assuming that humans are the only intelligent creature and are at the top of the development process. Just like today's humans look back at cro-magnon man as a primitive there very well could be other entities that looks upon present man as a primitive as well.

Time travel makes for great story telling, granted, but it's a bit of a myopic view.

 

[Tom]

Oh I believe there is other intelligent life in space - Its too big for there not to be.
I just don't believe we are being studied, visited or grown by any of them. Given the age and size of the universe, the commoness of our type of star sytem and planets, The vast distances that would be needed to be travelled seem too great of an expendature to justify the limited and recent activity that is being promoted.

Its like all the ships in Star Trek and Star Wars arriving at a destination upright to each other. It could happen but it is highly unlikely.

Time is a factor that should not be dismissed. Per string theory, the possibility of other dimensions is very likely. Crossing a timestream, if one could be isolated, may allow one to cross to the same stream like walking thru a door. Think of a string that crosses against itself.
It may not be time travellers but dimension travellers. Perhaps the sighting are beings from another dimension but of our relative universal coordinates. They have developed the ability to open gateways to other dimensions of space.

Its easier for me to grasp a being geting in his buggy and flipping some controls and phasing into our time stream/dimension than it is for me to believe a being getting in his buggy and setting off on a major journey to our little planet just to study us.

One must also take into account that intelligent beings are not likely to be bipedal, with 2 eyes, 1 mouth one head a torso and arms. Also lets not forget that the size of a being is relative to the characteristics of its home planet, star properties and metabolism.

Lets assume that a being evolves to intelligence on a planet with all the same parameters as ours. If not for a freak accident that changed the dominate life form on our planet 65 million years ago we likely would not exist as we do today. Our limbs may have grown similar and out features may have developed but one of the driving forces of our intelligence was that we had a chance to change. If there was not great dying 65 million years ago we would have remained a food item cowering in the shadows of the monsters that hunt us.
Now lets assume that the beings are the dominate lifeform of their planet and did grow similar to the way we developed. Being a dominate life form would create a whole new set of imperatives in their hunter/gatherer style. Their values would be very different. Being a dominate species they would have a confidence of their own superiority that would penetrate into how they would act toward other life forms. To assume that they would have any values in common to us is extremely pushing it.

Now, a being that developed on our planet, evolved from our body style and possessing our fundamental values and associations may resemble the beings as described in the common encounter story. Those beings would need to isolate their encounters and work in secrecy because they would relate to our values and fears.

As much as I would like to think that ET is visiting us and technology for FTL travel is possible it just seems too far fetched to be a reality.

 

[flammingeek]

I love all the horror classics

Nightmare of Elm Street
Firday the 13th


More recently I fell in love with this movie called the Tattooist. Its one of those CURSED "Something" movie. Where the cursed item causes the death of many people. This time it involves an ancient Samoan tattoo tool that everyone who gets Tattooed with causes DEATH. Really well done and put together.

 

[Mojo]

Oh I believe there is other intelligent life in space - Its too big for there not to be.
I just don't believe we are being studied, visited or grown by any of them. Given the age and size of the universe, the commoness of our type of star sytem and planets, The vast distances that would be needed to be travelled seem too great of an expendature to justify the limited and recent activity that is being promoted.

Its like all the ships in Star Trek and Star Wars arriving at a destination upright to each other. It could happen but it is highly unlikely.

Time is a factor that should not be dismissed. Per string theory, the possibility of other dimensions is very likely. Crossing a timestream, if one could be isolated, may allow one to cross to the same stream like walking thru a door. Think of a string that crosses against itself.
It may not be time travellers but dimension travellers. Perhaps the sighting are beings from another dimension but of our relative universal coordinates. They have developed the ability to open gateways to other dimensions of space.

Its easier for me to grasp a being geting in his buggy and flipping some controls and phasing into our time stream/dimension than it is for me to believe a being getting in his buggy and setting off on a major journey to our little planet just to study us.

One must also take into account that intelligent beings are not likely to be bipedal, with 2 eyes, 1 mouth one head a torso and arms. Also lets not forget that the size of a being is relative to the characteristics of its home planet, star properties and metabolism.

Lets assume that a being evolves to intelligence on a planet with all the same parameters as ours. If not for a freak accident that changed the dominate life form on our planet 65 million years ago we likely would not exist as we do today. Our limbs may have grown similar and out features may have developed but one of the driving forces of our intelligence was that we had a chance to change. If there was not great dying 65 million years ago we would have remained a food item cowering in the shadows of the monsters that hunt us.
Now lets assume that the beings are the dominate lifeform of their planet and did grow similar to the way we developed. Being a dominate life form would create a whole new set of imperatives in their hunter/gatherer style. Their values would be very different. Being a dominate species they would have a confidence of their own superiority that would penetrate into how they would act toward other life forms. To assume that they would have any values in common to us is extremely pushing it.

Now, a being that developed on our planet, evolved from our body style and possessing our fundamental values and associations may resemble the beings as described in the common encounter story. Those beings would need to isolate their encounters and work in secrecy because they would relate to our values and fears.

As much as I would like to think that ET is visiting us and technology for FTL travel is possible it just seems too far fetched to be a reality.

I'm not sure why it seems far more likely that we'll cross the time barrier than the FTL barrier. In essence, aren't they exactly the same barrier, according to relativity? But I'm assuming that you're envisioning some sort of H.G. Wells chair gismo, or maybe the "Guardian of Forever" from City on the Edge of Forever, which seem to operate more on the tenets of magic than science. How, precisely, does one travel backwards through time? Do we "warp" the space/time continuum? Would wormholes or other areas of intense gravity do the trick? And if so, how would you possibly control it?

(Where would you harness the 1.21 gigawatts of energy? And can you even find a DeLorean these days???)

Human beings exist comfortably in three dimensions. We already have vehicles that can go fast; it would seem to be a much lesser impediment to create vehicles that can simply go even faster. It seems much easier to believe that we can break barriers within our own dimensions than essentially change the very fiber of our beings that allow us to step through a fourth dimension. It's not inconceivable that we could create a spacecraft within the next 50 years that could travel at .3 the speed of light -- even with ramp-up speed, we could make it to Alpha Centauri in under 15 years. A long time by human standards, but less than a blink of an eye by galactic measures. Surely there could be other civilizations that see things by that same measure, that doesn't view a 100 year trip to be an abysmally long time span.

 

[Starbeast from Planet X]

We're all on the same wave-length. (we understand each other)

A random thought occurred to me...

If a life form from another planet was indeed scouting Earth via a "UFO" or other device they would want to remain undetected presumably so they would want to mask their device as something that would blend in with the local environment. To that end... looking up at the night sky and seeing the familiar triangle pattern of lights from a small aircraft, I wonder now if any of them are not what they seem to be.

I agree with the majority on the subject of outworlders watching us.

But of course, there may be many different types of beings from billions of other worlds and dimensions using different methods of travel, and some of them might be from our own galaxy. And I guess our neighbors will let us know when the time is right to communicate with them, for now most stick to the "PRIME DIRECTIVE"...................you know like in STAR TREK.